The Sexism of the Palin Pick
Read Ann Friedman on the implicit sexism of the theory that Sarah Palin will have some massive appeal to women who, apparently, just have no opinions about the issues whatsoever. Then consider figures like Maine Senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe or Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutcheson or Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice or Connecticut Governor Jody Rell all of whom are Republican women who are more conventionally qualified for higher office than Palin, but none of whom pass the “dogmatically right-wing” test to a sufficient degree. Which is fine, if you want to run to the right you run to the right. But expecting moderate-to-liberal women to sign on for something like that is silly — clearly the commitment here is to the cause of abortion criminalization and run-amok oil drilling rather than the advancement of women.
39 Responses to “The Sexism of the Palin Pick”
Register
RSSLogin
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Matt YglesiasContact Me
Donate
August 30th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
McCain’s entire campaign (powexperiencemavericketc.) is based on the idea that voters shouldn’t have opinions about the issues, so I don’t think the contempt he shows now for female voters is necessarily sexist.
August 30th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
This election will either produce the first Black president or the first female vice president.
Just in terms of media narrative the selection of a woman has changed how the election will be perceived. I haven’t seen a good study of how much impact the “first” factor has on voting, but there are voters who are happy that along with their issues, their vote represents progress of an excluded group. At the margin, I’m sure some votes actually change because of the “historic” factor.
Rove convinced McCain that a pro-choice woman would cost more votes than it would be worth, and obviously McCain bought it. But when it comes to successful pro-life women, there kind of aren’t a lot of them. I’d guess the entire (very short) list of plausible pro-life Republican women turned McCain down before he got to Palin.
I’d say Palin is about McCain’s best bet, and if the choice was last minute, that’s because the McCain team just does not run as tightly as the Obama team.
August 30th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
Probably not much of a vetting process. It will be interesting to see all her dirty laundry aired in public between now and November.
August 30th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
“But expecting moderate-to-liberal women to sign on for something like that is silly — clearly the commitment here is to the cause of abortion criminalization and run-amok oil drilling rather than the advancement of women.”
Expecting voters to always vote issues and policy over identity and personality – especially moderate voters – is pretty damn silly.
August 30th, 2008 at 3:09 pm
Actually the thing I find most amusing about McCain’s choice for VP is that he has shown over the years that he has ABSOLUTELY NO REGARD for women! He’s been crude in many of his public remarks, wants to have a Pro-Life administration and he’s not even in favor of an Equal Pay statute. Does he really think all of Hillary’s supporters will rush to his side just because he’s picked a woman as his running mate? Poor deluded fool that he is, I THOUGHT before that this man was living in a parallel universe, now I KNOW it! John McCain is not only out of touch with modern America, he’s showing himself to be totally ignorant as to the wants and needs of women in general.
Please don’t get me wrong, I admire Gov Palin for all that she’s accomplished in her public and private lives. I believe she’s destined for an exciting career in the Republican party, and I expect to see great things from her in the future, but now is not her time.
John McCain couldn’t have done much vetting apparently because he’s chosen someone he’d only met once, who doesn’t have any opinion about how to get out of Iraq, but hopes we have a plan to get out. Wants to teach “creationism” in public schools, doesn’t believe Global Warming is man made, and as recently as a couple of weeks ago stated how happy she was that Barack Obama was making inroads in the red state of Alaska!
I’m hoping against hope that the Republican Party will set a precedent next week and will choose to NOT nominate John McCain and perhaps choose to nominate Ron Paul instead! I know that’s an extreme suggestion but if enough of his delegates are upset about his choice for a running mate why couldn’t that happen? Does being the “Presumptive” REALLY mean it’s written in stone?
Be afraid America; be VERY AFRAID! John McCain is showing us how he’ll make decisions in the White House. He’s from the Ol’ Gut Check & Shoot from the Hip school and so is George W Bush.
How’d that work out for us over the last 8 years??
August 30th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
Sarah Palin couldn’t carry Hillary Clinton’s purse!
August 30th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
I am struck by the blatant hypocrisy of republicans when they decide to nominate someone other than a white male. Rather than nominate a qualified black or woman, they nominate a Clarence Thomas or a Sarah Palin. When their credentials are questioned, they then cry racism or sexism. However, to me this signifies contempt for both blacks and women. If I was a republican woman politician today, I’d really be insulted, since McCain’s choice seems to be trivializing their achievements.
August 30th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
“I’d say Palin is about McCain’s best bet, and if the choice was last minute, that’s because the McCain team just does not run as tightly as the Obama team.”
We won’t know until after the election if it was last minute or not. Given that total surprise was incredibly helpful for multiple reasons, they could have made the decision at a the highest levels many weeks ago, (conditional on HRC not getting the Dem Veep pick, of course), and just sat on it.
Given that they were running the HRC delegate TV ad on Monday, I’d say the pick has been set for a bare minimum of a week.
Also, I find it somewhat odd to speak of Obama’s team as running tightly in terms of the Veep rollout, considering that Biden leaked 72 hours before the pick was made official.
August 30th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Actually, men have a much more favorable view of Palin than women, according to fivethirtyeight.com.
August 30th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
It doesn’t take much evidence to persuade me that McCain’s pick has a strong sexist element. But it does seem to me that this pick is driven much more by 1) short-sighted media gaming, and 2) energizing the wingnut base that has no regard for actual governing. Of course one expects the Republicans to be clumsy with identity politics and think most women are stupid, but the lukewarm reception from women in general and the excited response from the hate-o-sphere makes me think this has more to do with “the BAYBEES” and “the homoseshuals.”
August 30th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
(conditional on HRC not getting the Dem Veep pick, of course)
I meant to say something about this.
My first impression was that Obama left this angle open to McCain by nominating Biden instead of Sebelius and therefore the Biden nomination was a blunder.
I don’t buy that Obama would lose votes by nominating a woman other than Hillary, but if you do, put Hillary’s name in the last paragraph and it doesn’t change the reasoning.
I now tend to think McCain choosing a pro-life woman would make almost the same sense even if Obama had a woman on his ticket.
So now I’m back to thinking the Obama team crunched the numbers and Biden, but their calculations is just a better nominee electorally than Sebelius.
Biden leaked 72 hours before the pick was made official
Very very disappointing.
August 30th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
“Sarah Palin couldn’t carry Hillary Clinton’s purse”
LOL. You’re right. I mean, Hillary Clinton earned that safe Senate seat in NY. It’s not like that was nepotism or anything. And Hillary has been very heroic…in….trying to become President….after marrying into third base…
Somebody who earned their position as governor and stood up to corruption doesn’t have anything on Clinton.
August 30th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
“Biden leaked 72 hours before the pick was made official … Very very disappointing.”
Y’know, I wish to extend and revise my remarks there.
Leaking Biden and killing all excitement before announcing in the Friday evening newshole has only two possible explanations:
1) Team Chicago is more incompetent than any Democratic Presidential campaign in a generation. By almost any standards, that was the worst Dem VP rollout in since at least 1984.
2) It was intentional. The Biden pick was done to attract the least attention possible. Leak the name on Tuesday to get everyone used to it, and then announce when everyone is already bored with it.
I actually believe option #2 is significantly more likely.
Team Chicago was trying to make their ’skipping over HRC problem’ go away by minimizing the Biden pick as much as humanely possible. Of course, now it’s been thrown back in their faces with the Palin pick, it seems obvious that they’d have been better off following the traditional route of using the VP pick to build excitement, rather than using it to build ennui.
August 30th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
“But expecting moderate-to-liberal women to sign on for something like that is silly — clearly the commitment here is to the cause of abortion criminalization and run-amok oil drilling rather than the advancement of women.”
It would be obviously silly to expect liberal women to sign on, or even moderates who follow politics closely. The pick is aimed at two groups: the base and swing voters. The Palin pick certainly fires up the base. Swing voters, as far as I can tell, are usually low-information voters. People who follow politics closely generally do so because they care about the issue, and they rarely are swing voters.
The Palin pick may help with low-information voters, or it may backfire. It depends on how she does over the next 60 days. But criticizing it because it’s not going to win over liberal-to-moderate women voters is silly; those voters werent going for McCain anyway, and none of the picks would have changed that. The pick energizes the Republican base, and it may make some swing voters take another look at the ticket because she’s a fresh face, and it adds a historical first to the Republican ticket.
August 30th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
What disappointed me was that the Times felt secure enough to print authoritatively that Biden was the nominee before the text messages went out.
72 hours before the announcement it was not certain to anyone except insiders, people who are much more political junkies than nearly anyone in the political blogosphere, which is saying a lot, and people who would adjust their perceptions after the fact.
I am disappointed that team Obama didn’t muster six more hours of message discipline. If the text messages had really been the scoop, that would have been a great story in itself.
If the aim is to distract people from the pick, the text message campaign never would have happened.
August 30th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
“If the aim is to distract people from the pick, the text message campaign never would have happened.”
The goal there was to harvest phone numbers. Nothing more and nothing less.
“72 hours before the announcement it was not certain to anyone except insiders”
Sure. But if insiders widely know 72 hours before, the news comes out in the form of a whimper instead of a bang.
Over the last 20 years, no other VP nominee was widely known to insiders 72 hours out.
That’s Palin, Edwards, Cheney, Lieberman, Kemp, Gore, Quayle, and Bentsen. All were at least minor surprises to insiders because that’s how you get the best media impact.
“What disappointed me was that the Times felt secure enough to print authoritatively that Biden was the nominee before the text messages went out.”
If I’m right that Team Chicago’s goal in the whole process was to make the pick as invisible as possible, giving it out to the media on Friday night and then text messaging after everyone went to sleep was fucking perfect.
They did their Veep rollout like you do good crisis management, not like you do good product rollout.
August 30th, 2008 at 7:43 pm
Lots of problem with Sarah Palin as a VP, but it seems very unfair to accuse John McCain of sexism because he’s picked her. This is a first for the Republican Party, and as such he should be applauded for picking a woman. And yes, there are definitely more qualified, and probably more competent, women that he could have picked instead, but most of them had political downsides that Palin just doesn’t have. So, yeah, not really sexist. Unfair perhaps, maybe even unfair because of structural sexism, but this is certainly a bigger step towards female equality in politics than picking, say Pawlenty, or any number of other possible candidates. And I don’t think we’d be hearing about sexism then.
August 30th, 2008 at 9:00 pm
Yeah, but then there’s THIS from Matt’s favorite paper, the WaPO:
Ha! Say the Online Hillary Supporters
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/08/29/ha_say_the_online_hillary_supp.html
August 30th, 2008 at 11:31 pm
if women voted for women we’d have a lot more than 16 women in the senate? i’d assumed mccain would notice that after 22 years
August 31st, 2008 at 5:31 am
Magoo will pick up a potentially significant number of women voters he might not otherwise have gotten had he not picked Palin. P.T. Barnum’s – “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public” is more of a truism now than ever before. The superfluous masses (both genders) are idiots. Issues, especially the crucial ones go over their heads. In the end it will come down mostly to whom they’d find more acceptable as a TV presence the next four years. In the best scenario – Obama wins because more voters think he’s “nicer” than that “cranky” McCain. The Palin choice softens McCain, but the almost comically lively ‘Smiling Jack’ bonhomie of Joe Biden I’ve come to believe is a plus as well. Americans like friendly used-car dealers with a good line of bullshit. They don’t even mind being fleeced.
August 31st, 2008 at 8:08 am
I can’t remember who, but there was an astute evangelical leader who pointed out that the reason McCain won people who were more middle class and conservatively religious over Romney was because while Romney was busy flip-flopping on abortion and getting Christianist leaders to endorse him, McCain won on religious issues, such as being more reliably pro-life than Romney. A big reason women are more likely to be Democrats do have to do with issues: abortion, education, healthcare, equal work for equal pay, etc. Men tend to have more of a luxury than women of not voting on issues.
August 31st, 2008 at 6:46 pm
I think you are exactly right. Given that we cannot find anything Pailin has said or writen on important foreign affairs issues, or on most federal issues for that matter, Palin must have been chosen by McCain to appeal to those women who have no opinion on the issues whatsoever.
March 2nd, 2009 at 4:52 am
levitraGreat site. Good info
March 11th, 2009 at 4:29 am
If you have to do it, you might as well do it right
March 14th, 2009 at 5:10 am
It is the coolest site,keep so!
xanax
April 2nd, 2009 at 5:09 am
Incredible site!
buy cheap viagra
April 3rd, 2009 at 4:06 am
Great site. Good info
cheap brand pfizer viagra
April 9th, 2009 at 7:37 am
Not that I’m impressed a lot, but this is a lot more than I expected when I stumpled upon a link on Delicious telling that the info here is quite decent. Thanks.